We all know that the United States recognizes the soverignity of several American Indian nations within the borders of the United States.
My questions about them deal with the extent of that soverignity.
I know that people who are members of these Indian nations are also U.S. citizens by an Act of Congress. The question is, are they also “citizens” of their respective nations. Do some of them carry Chrokee passports? If they had an airport, could someone fly from the reservation to Great Britian on one of their passports?
Do the residents of these reservations pay federal income tax? State income tax of the states in which they are located?
When the U.S. calculates it’s land area, does it include the area of the reservations?
Can these Indian nations appoint ambassadors and diplomats to other countries? Can they sign treaties with Canada? Can they declare war? If not with other countries (such as Canada, etc.) can they declare war or sign treaties with other Indian nations?
Does any other nation aside from the United States (and other American Indian nations) recognize these nations?
Is extradition necessary to retrieve a criminal from these nations? If a killer runs to the Cherokee nation, can the FBI or any other federal or local agency follow him in there, or does he need to be extradited?
Can they coin/print their own money?
The federal government guarantees a republican form of government to all it’s citizens. Since American Indians are U.S. citizens, does that mean that tribal leaders (or whatever form of government these nations have) have to have republican forms of government? And if so, then are these nations truly soverign if they must listen to the United States in terms of how to form their government?
See Peter d’Errico’s article, Sovereignty: A Brief History in the Context of U.S. Indian law, from the Legal Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts. It should answer most of your questions about American Indian sovereignty. As you will see, the courts have been all over the place with this. But in general, the U.S. federal government calls the shots.
The Cherokee Nation has a government, complete with executive, legislative, and judicial branches. But there are no ambassadors. It is generally understood that sovereignty for American Indians is subordinate to that of their conquerors.
This still comes into question fairly often. The most obvious recent issue is that of casino gambling. Another interesting one is that of recreational drugs. There’s a tribe (and dammit, I can’t remember the name, but I believe they’re located in the southwest) that’s repeatedly grown large crops of marijuana. The DEA has repeatedly stepped in to destroy the crops, although I don’t believe arrests have been made.
Another wrinkle concerns Social Security SSI eligibility. For example, are casino receipts “income?”
Another guy in our office handles all of these questions. I remember a case a couple of years back where a Wisc tribe bought a condo on Michigan Ave. in Chi, and tried to declar it an adjunct part of their reservation.
I’ll talk to him later this aft and see if he has anything to add.
I can’t remember what, if any, taxes I paid last year on groceries bought on a rez.
My understanding is that the reservations’ status is not full sovereignty but merely autonomy within a larger country. This kind of legal construction can be found in many nations in the world with ethnic minorities, and usually the autonomous areas have certain rights in interior affairs but no authority to deal internationally - these privileges are reserved by the central government. Interior policies yes, foreign policies no.
Folks…I live close to the Largest Casino on the face of this Planet. Called FOXWOODS RESORT CASINO owned and operated by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation in southeastern Connecticut. They are a Sovereign Nation, Connecticut State Troopers are not even allowed to arrest anyone on their property. If you commit any crime you go to Tribal court, i.e. caught with marijuana, cocaine, heroin etc…etc… you go to tribal court, steal, assault…on and on… you get the point.
And the kicker is, there are less than 400 verified tribal members and the king bee, Skip Haywood, is worth around what Billy Gates is…and the casino only opened in 1992.
Do a google search on Foxwoods and check it out, it is actually quite impressive.
You may also like to review the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ list of frequently asked questions. Unfortunately, that site has been pulled off the Internet because of federal ineptitude (and quite likely avarice) as a result of the Cobell litigation. Here is a similar list compiled by the state of Washington.
I’ll try to list a lot of these questions and answer them, but due to the lack of a BIA website, I’ll not be able to provide a lot of citations.
The idea is gaining some momentum, particularly from the traditionalist branch of the Mohawks. These passports definitely won’t work within the United States, but it is possible that once outside of the United States a Mohawk tribal member could attempt to travel on that passport. However, the United States has shot this idea down in the past, so don’t count on them being cooperative about it.
Federal? Hell, yes. State? Hell, no! At least not yet. Virtually every year, some version of the “Istook Bill” gets introduced into Congress which would mandate that tribal corporations and sometimes members must pay a “state equivalence” sales tax or something similar.
A note on federal Indian law: the Supremes have determined that Congress is the final decisionmaker on exactly what the extent of Indian sovereignty is. That essentially means that at any time, Congress can wipe out the sovereignty of American Indian tribes. Since that is politically inexpedient, since the 1970s those who oppose tribal sovereignty have worked on the erosion principle. Right now, about the last thing that tribes enjoy is freedom from state-imposed taxes, and for good reason. Tribes don’t get state health, infrastructure, or education funds. What they get in return for shitty roads, water, education and health care is the right of self-determination.
I’m pretty sure the answer is, “yes.” However, American Indian land is land held in trust by the United States for the exclusive use and benefit of Indian tribes. This supposedly ensures that Indian land cannot be alienated without the explicit approval of the United States. In practice, the United States facilitated some of the largest–and sometimes illegal–land grabs in our nation’s history, both by not compensating tribes for their treaty-arranged trading of land for other territory and basic services, or by “allotting” the land to tribal members in fee, whereupon state and local entities would impose prohibitive taxes and annex the territory for failure to pay.
Probably not. Indian nations exist on the premise that, while they enjoy elements of sovereignty, they have surrendered the right to dictate their own foreign policy. This is not unique to American Indian tribes. I believe the Marshall and Mariana Islands have similar arrangements with the United States–internal autonomy, but external deference to American foreign policy.
Several tribes along the border of the U.S. and Canada have treaties with both the U.S. and Canada. Red Lake and the Mohawks spring readily to mind.
However, at least one tribe has appointed “ambassadors” to… the United States! Other tribes participate in international associations independent of the United States.
Yes, and no. Organizations with federal jurisdiction, such as the ATF, FBI, and DEA, have free reign to enter Indian reservations and nab (or, in the case of Pine Ridge, possibly assassinate) anyone they want.
State law enforcement, on the other hand, are generally prohibited from entering a reservation. This is the origin of the over-reported and misunderstood stories of a tribal member running back onto the reservation after committing a crime. It is easily overcome with cross-deputization agreements, but states generally don’t want Indian law enforcement to enjoy the same privileges they themselves demand from the reservations, so many tribes don’t have cross-deputization agreements.
Only if you count a casino as a license to print money, my friend!
Yes, in general tribes must have a constitution that guarantees a form of representative government. There is a standard constitution, actually printed as a fill-in-the-blank form and known informally as an “IRA” (as in the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act) constitution, which can be used. Many tribes choose to create their own governments and government titles, within certain delineated limits. There are two tribal towns in Oklahoma which elect “Kings.” Most tribes elect a tribal council which performs most of the functions of tribal government.
This is a contentious issue in New York State. There are a number of reservations in the western half of the state. Non-reservation residents go on the reservations to buy tobacco and alcohol, which aren’t taxed there, but would be if they were sold off reservation. As you can imagine, New York State isn’t happy about this loss of revenue.
As I understand it, most American Indians are perfectly comfortable with the term “Indian.” I, as an Asian-Indian American, prefer to reserve the term “Indian” for people like me and use the term “Native American” for those my grandparents refer to as “Red Indians.”
When the Cherokees in NC opened their casino they got permission from the state of NC to do it. I thought that was kind of strange because I didn’t think they needed to get permission. Right now all they have is video poker.
Of course maybe it was just a formality and the state of NC could not have denied their request.
No. The geographer Martin Waldsmuller named the land “America” in 1507, after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who wrote to Pier Soderini, Gonfalonier of the Republic of Florence in 1497:
By the way, he took, in all, 222 people as “captive slaves” on that first voyage, and sold them at the port of Calis (Cadiz) in Spain on October 15, 1498. “God be thanked,” he told the Gonfalonier.
It is de facto permission. A tribe is required by the terms of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act to enter into a compact with the state in which a particular reservation resides. States must enter into a compact.
However, there is no timetable for the agreement process and no penalties for delay. The practical result is that states which do not want tribal gaming can simply delay the process indefinitely.
Actually the Marshall and Caroline Islands (the latter as as the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau) are recognized as full sovereign nations and have their own Ambassadors to the UN and to Washington, but they are bound by the terms of their “association” to American national-security policy. The Northern Marianas became a “commonwealth” like PR, a category of US territory with high internal autonomy but fully under American jurisdiction
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Actually…and I don’t have a cite for this right on hand, so I hope no one challenges me, but…there is no prohibition in the US against local governments printing their own currency, as long as it is in denominations of at least $1. A few years ago I read about some city in upstate NY that was doing it, they called their currency “Hours”.
There is also a similar legal construction for those of us Americans who are not members of an American Indian nation, to wit, each of the 50 states is a sovereign state that exists within a larger sovereign state.
As someone who lived in Ithaca, NY for 5 1/2 years, I’ll add my personal opinion that Ithaca Hours were a total flop. Its induction without a base case. Businesses won’t accept Ithaca Hours in exchange for merchendise if they can’t pay their employees in Ithaca Hours, and employees won’t accept Ithaca Hours as a wage payment if businesses don’t take them in exchange for goods and services.
US Dollars suffer from this same theoretical problem, but for some reason people accept them, and thus, I choose to accept them as well.